Overactive Imaginations, Take Note...
by Takira
Summary: For your edifaction--a brief lecture by Duo Maxwell on the subject of...Duo Maxwell.


My name is Duo Maxwell--and I'm here to clarify a few points that seem to have gotten lost in the so-called grey areas; pay attention, class, I'll go through these only once.

My parents didn't name me Duo Maxwell. I have no idea who my parents were, where they lived, what they looked like; if I have siblings, I don't know them, won't likely recognize them, and I highly doubt they'd recognize me. The odds of one of them becoming a gundam pilot are worse than those of Dr. G being a playboy bunny.

I was born a male, am still a male, and will live out the rest of my days as a male. To review an essential point of biology, males of the human species cannot become pregnant or spontaneously change to a gender that can.

I am human; not a demon, not a vampire, not a god. I am fifteen years old, not a thousand, and I have not been pining after Heero since he was born; I didn't even meet him until recently.

To expand on that, I don't kiss Heero in public or made wild passionate (and yet depressingly formulaic) love to him every thirty minutes. I am not a dominatrix, I don't enjoy making people bleed, and I don't have tubes of lubricant in my pockets, my cap, random desk drawers, or the Deathscythe.

I am a sexual being only inasmuch as the human species is a sexual species. I don't jump everything attractive that comes within arm's length, I don't stalk people, and I don't kill anyone who touches Hilde, Heero, or whomever else you happen to think I covet. I don't keep a harem of them, either. I am not a dark and mysterious sex god.

I have never gone down on Chang Wufei. Setting aside for the moment the fact that I don't want to, he'd kill me for trying anyhow. Moot point on either end.

Quatre's a good kid and a friend of mine; that doesn't mean I've raped him or been raped _by_ him. It doesn't mean he's with Trowa, either--to be perfectly honest, Trowa and sex don't, to me, belong in the same breath. I simply find it difficult to picture. On that note, I've not had sex with Trowa, either.

I do not hate Relena with a passion because she goes all doe-eyed at Heero. I happen to think that the confused-puppy look he gets when she does that is hilarious, and the teasing value is well worth any speculative jealousy.

I am not pure comic relief, but by the same token, I'm not as bad as you think I am. If I've ever contemplated suicide outside of a battle situation it's no business of yours. If I had actually attempted it, it's a safe bet that I would be dead now. Death is not, as a rule, a half-assed prospect for me.

I don't sob my heart out or drink in public places...that takes a lack of inhibition that I really don't have or _want_ to have. I don't dismantle home appliances out of destructive boredom, either: time and idleness are both necessary prerequisites to boredom, and I'm a bit short on both commodities, most of the time.

I am not adorably clumsy. If I tripped over my own feet when I walked I would not be able to fulfill my duties as a pilot. I never grew my hair out long enough to trip over my braid, no matter how cute you think that would be. The braid, by the way, is not a handle. If you pull on it, I will be annoyed; and if you are persistant, I may hit you.

As an aside, neither my braid nor Deathscythe's weapon is a phallic symbol, so knock it off already.

I do not lie; this doesn't mean I have to tell the fullness of the truth at all times, and it doesn't make me ingenuous or naive. I am not stupid.

Allow me to repeat that: I am _not_ stupid. I'm not the computer genuis that Heero is and I am not as skilled with pyrotechnics as Wufei is. I am not meant to be redundant to either of them; I have my own skills and if my IQ were equivalent to that of coleslaw I wouldn't be a pilot, let alone a successful one. I am not the "weak link". If anyone weak of mind or body attempted to pilot a gundam they would die very quickly, and I am not dead.

As to me being the least-effective pilot of the group...I honestly have no idea, but if I am, they've been raising the bar. Exhibits A and B: Mercurius and Vayeate, gundam dolls--taking them both on would be the equivalent of fighting Heero and Trowa simultaneously. May I point out at this juncture that neither of those machines is still around; in point of fact, I destroyed them, and did so without sustaining debilitating damage to the Deathscythe.

If any of the others could do the same, more power to them. We're not in any sort of competition. We never were; we're all ostensibly on the same side, remember?

If you must take only one lesson from my ramblings, let it be this: things aren't exactly what they seem. What's staring you in the face may not be reality, and that which you've never seen may be responsible for more than you could know. To see the world otherwise is simplistic disillusion.

--Shinigami, signing off.


End file.
